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Dossiers

Edited by Algerian sociologist and WLUML founder, Marieme Hélie-Lucas, this bumper dossier brings you papers by over 15 contributors, including Karima Bennoune: The Law of the Republic Versus the ‘Law of the Brothers': A story of France’s law banning religious symbols in public; Pragna Patel: Cohesion, Multi-Faithism and the Erosion of Secular Spaces in the UK: Implications for the human rights of minority women; and Gita Sahgal: ‘The Question Asked by Satan’: Doubt, dissent and discrimination in 21st-century Britain.

In both Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities, the last decade has witnessed unprecedented organizing efforts by human rights defenders around sexual and reproductive rights, and produced evidence of ongoing local engagement around sexuality issues.

Yet, sexuality remains a highly contested and tightly patrolled terrain in all societies, and activists from Muslim contexts are also witnessing troubling trends that threaten previous gains, or seem indicative of a worsening climate. Such trends include the curtailing of sexual and reproductive rights and an increased policing of sexuality: there is a tendency to seek to reverse less restrictive policies or legislations; as well as widespread targeting of individuals, or even of entire groups. Those individuals or groups who bear the brunt of the criminalization of sexuality are often those whose personal circumstances, bodies, sexualities or gender appearance are deemed non-normative. Whether they are girls resisting marriage, divorced women, single women, lesbian women, teenagers who have not undergone FGM in contexts where it is the norm, or heterosexual men deemed ‘effeminate’, many face strict penalties.

In addition to the work of multi-national institutions, the theory is that national gender machinery can play an important role in the struggle to protect and promote women’s rights. Catherine Albertyn argues that national machinery for the advancement of women “… consists of structures, mechanisms, and strategies for achieving equality for women as participants, decision makers and beneficiaries in the political, social, economic and cultural spheres of life.”

For more than two decades, feminists have discussed the impact and mechanics of extreme right politico-religious forces and shared strategies of resistance against fundamentalisms. But, as feminists, we have yet to develop a coherent analysis of the concrete alternatives. Yet we need such an analysis in order to move beyond resistance and be more pro-active in our advocacy for an alternative vision of society.

In some contexts, such as Sri Lanka, women from the minority have been demanding positive reform in the existing separate legal system that is binding upon Muslims and in the Philippines an entire alternative Code has been drafted; in Israel, Arab women’s groups have focused on demanding access to the State Family Court, rather than reforming the Shari’a Courts).